


not with words

by booksnchocolate



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Tumblr Prompt, but like in an ~atmospheric and ~poetic way, mostly idiots being emotionally constipated, not fluff but not angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-12 12:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5666665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booksnchocolate/pseuds/booksnchocolate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack never says anything. Not with words. (Written for a tumblr prompt: things you said too quietly)</p>
            </blockquote>





	not with words

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my fucking god I LOVE THEM SO MUCH but augh idk this was a hard prompt for me.

Sometimes, Rhys feels like Jack’s speaking in a language he’ll never understand; feels like there’s something lingering just under the surface of his words, hidden in the curl of his tongue, sunk deep into his skin like the smokesmell he can’t ever seem to shake. It’s been eight months, and Rhys’ clothes smell like gunpowder too.

He thinks he hears it sometimes, when he catches Jack muttering to himself, distracted by a particularly tricky line of code or when he enters the room and Jack is on the tail end of a sentence he can’t quite catch. 

“What’d you say?” Rhys asks one day when Jack’s voice filters through his head as he’s perched at the kitchen island, half-lost in thoughts of R&D inspections and quarterly meetings. 

If Rhys looked, he’d see the quick glance Jack shoots him, something that would almost be called furtive in another man. Rhys is stirring his coffee and doesn’t look. 

“Nothing, kitten.”

There are things Jack isn’t telling him. Obviously. Rhys may be infatuated but he’s not an idiot nor is he naive enough to believe that Jack - who built Hyperion from the ground up and strangles workers without batting an eye - would ever be completely honest with him. Rhys knows what it’s like to play your cards close to your chest, has no illusions about the corporate sabotage and backstabbing that go on every day; so he can’t fault Jack for his secrets, not really. 

It’s not as if he doesn’t have his own. 

But there’s something more. There has to be. Jack would never - will never - say as much, he knows, but that doesn’t explain the little things. It doesn’t explain the shiny new ECHOcomm upgrades Rhys finds on his desk one morning. It doesn’t explain the mysterious appearance of Rhys’ favourite hazelnut coffee blend in Jack’s kitchen cupboard when he knows Jack takes his coffee unflavoured and black. There’s something more, something else lurking beneath the gestures, some message so nuanced Rhys feels as if he could go blind just trying to read it.

Jack never says anything. Not with words.

But a message doesn’t need to be loud to be heard. Rhys reads it in the bruises on his hips, blue marks on pale skin spread wide where Jack had gripped him the night before, fucking into him in harsh, merciless strokes. He feels it in the slick heat around his cock, in the way Jack clenches as Rhys tilts his hips just so and hits his prostate, making Jack growl in pleasure, a low rumbling noise Rhys feels in his bones. There’s a message in the way Jack bites his neck, mouth hot and predatory (and the teeth grazing his skin are just this side of painful but Rhys can’t stop himself from tilting his head, offering up his throat to Jack without a word passing between them). There’s a code in the way Jack tangles his hands in Rhys’ hair; a missive in the way he says Rhys’ name; a prayer in the pressure of a warm hand on Rhys’ throat as he comes, anchoring him to this body, reminding him where he belongs. 

And Rhys tries not to read into it but he can’t ignore the warmth that curls in his chest at Jack’s smile, malicious and playful all at once. He can’t hold back the excitement that thrills through his veins when he watches Jack lift another puny struggling scientist off the ground with one hand closed around their windpipe. He can’t stop the way his voice breaks on Jack’s name as his orgasm hits him full-force and his vision fades out into a wash of white with two solitary stars, one blue, one green.

He looks at the bruising scattered across his chest, a galaxy of blue-purple flesh, the centre of which falls directly over his tattoo. Over his heart. 

There is a message there and Rhys thinks he understands.

Some words weren’t meant to be spoken.


End file.
